Alexandersmap

    Category: Habits

    • The Magic of Single Line Journaling

      “find beauty in each day
      a small beauty works fine

      bask in it
      then let it go

      other beauty awaits you”
      – Kat Lehmann, Stones from the River

      Last night I finished my fourth book in four days. That sounds like I’m reading a book a day, which is inaccurate. No, I’m merely whittling down the stack of books read throughout this year at around the same time. But I’m pleased to close them each out. When I read on the Kindle app I then go back and review the highlights once again, just to understand the salient points to make sense of the whole. No great surprise to anyone: some of those highlighted passages end up in this blog.

      If you take the micro poem by Lehmann and insert the word “book” where “day” is, well, you get an entirely different micro poem, and yet very much the same. Or insert “journey” or “conversation” or “decision” where “day” currently resides and… you get the point. There’s magic in words, and our choice of words.

      But to stay with the original word just a bit longer, I established this habit of writing down a summary of each day in one line in a journal. Sometimes this isn’t easy when all you did in a day was write a blog post, work and eat a pizza for dinner. But other entries offer more emphatic moments of consequence. I start/stopped this habit early in the year, and then it became an every day thing in June. I’d say six months officially makes it a habit.

      This micro poem sums up the exercise quite well. Find something notable or beautifully commonplace that occurred in a day and write it down in one line. And like a micro poem there’s joy in its simplicity. You only have one line. Write small if you will, but get right to the point. What happened? What did you do? What was the beauty you found in this day? One line.

      As with re-reading the highlights in a Kindle book I look back on months of single line entries and I see moments come alive again. Celebrations, mountains climbed, loved ones lost, friendships rekindled, and yes, an occasional pizza. I’m grateful for having written it all down. One line, for one day, at a time. For there’s magic in those words.

    • Quality Time

      “What is the state of things, then? It is this: I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him. I advise you, however, to keep what is really yours; and you cannot begin too early. For, as our ancestors believed, it is too late to spare when you reach the dregs of the cask. Of that which remains at the bottom, the amount is slight, and the quality is vile.”
      – Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

      Re-read that Seneca quote and measure your use of alive time against what you have left in the cask. If this year offered plenty of cause to question our use of time or the unfairness in the world, it also gave us time to think and to pivot towards better uses of time than we might have before. But the irony is that we can’t waste time dwelling on it, we can only use it as a guiding light for what we do next.

      “Our current use of time is not rational. There is therefore no point in seeking marginal improvements in how we spend our time. We need to go back to the drawing board and overturn all our assumptions about time. There is no shortage of time. In fact, we are positively awash with it. We only make good use of 20 percent of our time. And for the most talented individuals, it is often tiny amounts of time that make all the difference.” – Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle

      I got out and walked yesterday, pondering the narrow shoulders of the roads in my town and the number of cars driving on them in the busy stretches, and appreciating the quiet stretches with no cars where I could think. The takeaway was to remove the busy roads and walk in places where thinking is 80 percent of your walking time instead of simply surviving the experience. The time allocated to walking was always available to me this year, I just put it aside more often than I used it.

      I think back on the crazy year that was 2020, and wonder where the time went. Too much time on useless activities, chasing after opportunities that turned to vapor in the hard reality of the pandemic, and squandering time on social media, political debate, and watching entertainment of questionable quality. I spent more time with an iPhone in my hand than I should have, but tried to use that time reading the Kindle app, learning a bit of French and Portuguese, and taking pictures of the good moments.

      “The 80/20 Principle says that we should act less. Action drives out thought. It is because we have so much time that we squander it…. It is not shortage of time that should worry us, but the tendency for the majority of time to be spent in low-quality ways… If much greater work would benefit the most idle 20 percent of our people, much less work would benefit the hardest-working 20 percent; and such arbitrage would benefit society both ways. The quantity of work is much less important than its quality, and its quality depends on self-direction.” – Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle

      During those moments of thinking time while walking I turned over the key points of Koch’s book in my head, thinking about the the quality of the time spent and how to spend it better. We don’t really know what’s left in the cask, but we know it’s not as full as it once was. The 80/20 Principle is both obvious and widely ignored by most people. But why be most people? When applied to our use of time, the pursuit of quality becomes… imperative.

    • Islands of Time, Cornerstones of Castles

      “Behind the issue of how we allocate time lurks the even more fundamental issue of what we want to get out of our lives.” – Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle

      In reading Koch’s book it struck me how profoundly influential he was in Tim Ferriss’ The Four Hour Work Week. Not a shock, really, since Ferriss often refers to Koch’s book as one of his cornerstones. I suppose I’d always thought of his use of the Pareto Principle as the essential takeaway, but didn’t realize the extent to which Koch urges lifestyle design himself in his book.

      The 80/20 Principle offers the usual business cases for who you spend your time with and what you spend your time on in business, but I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting the deeper dive into the self that he thrusts upon you. I’ll tap into this book in future posts, but wanted to explore Koch’s top ten highest-value uses of time. Here they are:

      The Top 10 highest-value uses of time:
      1. Things that advance your overall purpose in life
      2. Things you have always wanted to do
      3. Things already in the 20/80 relationship of time to results
      4. Innovative ways of doing things that promise to slash the time required and/or multiply the quality of results
      5. Things other people tell you can’t be done
      6. Things other people have done successfully in a different arena
      7. Things that use your own creativity
      8. Things that you can get other people to do for you with relatively little effort on your part
      9. Anything with high-quality collaborators who have already transcended the 80/20 rule of time, who use time eccentrically and effectively
      10. Things for which it is now or never
      – Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle

      The list is fascinating on a lot of levels as a look at what a “highly successful person” prioritizes. I’ve put that in quotations because not everyone has the same belief about what success is, but you can’t take away that he’s accomplished quite a bit using his belief system. We all have this lurking issue of time, for we aren’t immortal, are we? So what would you prioritize?

      Well, Koch suggests making four lists to identify your own 20 percent that you should prioritize. He segments them as “islands”, or small segments of time, under which you list the things you’ve done that have contributed disproportionately towards each. The segments are: Happiness Islands, Unhappiness Islands, Achievement Islands and Achievement Desert Islands (periods of greatest sterility or lowest productivity). Your task is straightforward: Identify each, and then act accordingly in how you prioritize your time.

      Ah, yes… Making lists is one thing. Acting accordingly is quite another. And this is where most people fall off. And this is what Thoreau meant in one of his most famous quotes:

      “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      Thoreau would have seen common ground in Koch’s list, and he himself pointed the way in Walden:

      “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      Ferriss also mentioned Walden as a cornerstone book, and it is for me as well. But cornerstones only mean something if you build your castle on top of them. Otherwise they’re just a few rocks oddly places that someone else might trip over if they were distracted with their own life. Koch’s four islands are a great guide for prioritization and action.

    • A Small Change

      “a small change
      in rudder
      affects both the journey
      and the destination”
      – Kat Lehmann, Small Stones From The River

      There is no doubt that the year brought unprecedented storms that have collectively altered our course. But what of the set of our sail? What of the rudder? The world in all its maddeningly unpredictable ways will be what it is, but our course is largely set by us.

      Ultimately we control very little in the world but how we react to it. We change course in countless ways all the time. This year offered many lessons. And choices: Alive time or dead time? Some may say it was a lost year, but I would argue it informed us greatly about our resilience, our priorities, and our adaptability. And with that hard-won knowledge, where do we steer to now?

      A small change, consistently acted upon, determines where we go. Small, constant changes lead to a zig-zagging, undetermined course. Which is better? It depends on where you want to be and how quickly you want to get there. Both bring you places. But we don’t want to be rudderless.

      I prefer to have the tiller and a compass heading I’m confident in. React as we must to the conditions we find ourselves in, but generally keep steering towards our destination. And discover what we may. For the journey is underway.

    • 20 Days Left in 2020

      Today there are twenty days left in 2020. What are you going to do with those twenty days? The other 346 tumultuous, maddening days of this year are behind us. All that’s left in this year are twenty days and it will be a memory stacked with all of our other memories. So what will we make of them?

      Time isn’t our friend, my friend. With so little time available in our productive lifetimes, deciding what you will finish, what will define your time here, is in itself life altering. Boiled down even further (since time isn’t guaranteed anyway), deciding what you will finish in a year, a month, a week and, you guessed it, a day lends urgency to the most mundane of tasks. Luckily for us, twenty days is a small enough sample that we can wrap our minds around it.

      What are you here for anyway? Decide what to be and go be it, as the Avett Brothers would suggest. And as the days shrink into the dark nuggets of December days and we round the corner into the New Year, what are you going to do with that precious time anyway? Finishing more seems a good answer.

      For me that means work goals, final chapters in several books, fitness goals and places to be. Everything else is time with loved ones. That’s more than enough to focus on as we hit the home stretch.

      Final Chapters
      I’ve got a stack of critical reading to finish. Seven books in all, that I’ve mentally noted as my finish in 2020 books. For all my complaining about my tendency to bounce around between books, I’ve made steady progress despite it all. If you’re the average of the five people you hang around with the most then raising that average with the authors of exceptional books is a worthy use of limited time. Notably, I’ve set aside some other books that I’ve chosen not to finish. Life is full of compromise. Just make compromises that will still move you forward.

      Fitness
      Stretching your mental boundaries through reading is one thing, but we can’t let our bodies waste away in the meantime. Worthwhile fitness goals force the issue of how you spend your days. I’ve accepted a rowing challenge from old college friends. And so I’ll be spending more of that precious time rowing a few hundred thousand miles in preparation for the moment of truth: 2000 meters for time. Nothing focuses the mind on the task of getting in peak shape like a 2000 meter row on a Concept 2 Rowing Ergometer.

      Places to Be
      Getting fit is great, but I’m an outdoor creature at heart and I can’t very well spend my entire winter indoors rowing. As luck would have it there are worthy places to go and things to see within reach in a year where travel is prohibited. Hiking trails, mountain peaks, waterfalls and long stretches of sandy beach with no footprints on them in winter are all waiting patiently for you. Lonely sites of historical significance with ghosts waiting to whisper to you. All outside the door and a short drive away. Forget binge-watching, try binge-doing.

      Only twenty days left in the year. A power twenty, as rowers would recognize: twenty at maximum effort to pull ahead. Not all that much for a year we’ll surely never forget in our lifetimes. Why not make something positive out of the last twenty? Twenty powerful days to finish this year, and to set ourselves up for a brighter future.

    • Graced with the Ordinary

      “Let the world
      have its way with you,
      luminous as it is with mystery
      and pain –
      graced as it is
      with the ordinary.”
      – Mary Oliver, Summer Morning

      Today, for his birthday, I used the camel hair shaving brush while shaving. He gave it to me in a ceremonial way, as if turning over command of the Bridge, about eighteen months ago. Hard to say when, really, but it was clear it meant something to him and he wanted me to have it. And to use it. Well, old habits die hard, and when you shave your face every day you form deep habits. Still, I’d use the brush now and then because it performs. Nothing lathers your shaving cream like a good shaving brush.

      The small, ordinary things stand out for me. Maybe it’s the writing that draws my eye to the commonplace, but honestly I think it may be the other way around. I’ve always had an inordinate focus on the small things around me, and those small things seek a voice in the universe. We honor the things we amplify.

      The old Navy pilot would pull me aside and talk of my writing, such that it is, and encourage me to keep going with it. He read a lot, he knew good writing, and he saw something in mine that sparked his interest. It was shortly after that that he gave me the shaving brush. Maybe he had it in mind for me all along, but it felt connected. And I feel the connection with him when I use it to shave.

      Happy Birthday Pops.

    • The Next Stroke

      “Every stroke well rowed means a better stroke next time, and so a better chance of winning the race. Every stroke well rowed is felt by all the crew and gives them confidence, and they consequently row their next stroke better; and every careless stroke rolls the boat and puts a nervousness through the crew. So Victory or Defeat depend on the next stroke.” – Steve Fairbairn

      I underlined the above quote in a book back the early 1990’s when I was coaching crew. The quote was almost certainly referenced in some practice session to remind individuals about the essential power of swing in a boat. To focus on the next stroke was all that mattered. The one after that would take care of itself, and so on. Victory or defeat depended on the next stroke. One after another, until you’ve finished the race.

      The rowing began in earnest yesterday. The goal is 100K in November, with only 5K completed. But this is achievable with a mix of 5K and 10K rows over the next twenty days. And then a bigger goal in December. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. One day at a time.

      This is my sweet spot: consistent steady state rowing over a defined period of time. I loved being on the water, and yet I row in my basement on an erg purchased over twenty years ago. I haven’t rowed in a rowing shell on the water in all that time, and yet I row still. And each stroke is a lesson.

      The erg is different from the boat in countless ways, but the essence of the rowing stroke remains the same. There’s a rhythm and fluidity to the rowing stroke that translates as well to the flywheel as it does to the check in a boat moving across water. Mastering each stroke is all that matters in rowing. You might build strategy into the race or the piece you’re rowing; start fast, drop to a pace you can maintain, pick it up with 500 to go and sprint for the last 20 strokes, but strategy falls on its face if you don’t master this stroke and the one after.

      This approach to rowing, mastering the next stroke, certainly applies to the rest of life too. Master the next call when selling, the next sentence when writing, the next step when hiking, the next stride when running. It’s all the same; consistent focus on mastering the moment at hand. The rest will take care of itself. From now until we finish the race.

    • Process and Persistence

      “Process saves us from the poverty of intentions.” – Elizabeth King (via Seth Godin & Tim Ferriss)

      “You begin with a subject, gather material, and work your way to structure from there. You pile up volumes of notes and then figure out what you are going to do with them, not the other way around.” – John McPhee, On The Writing Process

      Blogging is a process that saves me from my poverty of intentions. I’ve intended to write for years, but pushed it aside in pursuit of everything both worthy and irrelevant. Sure the site needs work, the writing has typos now and then and Yoast SEO is fixed in a permanent frown, but so what? If you’re along for the journey, welcome, you’ve apparently overcome a ton of SEO blunders on my part to get here.

      If there’s a common theme throughout life, its the fact that we can never do quite enough to reach perfection. I’m nowhere near it myself. But I walk the path one step at a time, writing, editing, publishing and starting again at the beginning every day. And that’s a victory in itself. Screw perfection – give me process and persistence.

      “Mastery is the process of narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success, repeating it until you have internalized the skill, and then using this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier of your development.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      And that’s where I am, focus narrowed and repeating daily towards a level of mastery I may never achieve. But I’ll be closer for the effort. There’s some measure of the Pareto principle in that James Clear quote. Focus on the 20% that achieves the goal. SEO doesn’t necessarily matter. Likes and follows don’t necessarily matter. The work matters. So do more than focus, do the work.

    • The Cumulative Force

      “Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it.”
      – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

      Re-reading Self-Reliance is always a pep talk with the Master. Sometimes I wonder at (and have written before about) the conversations Emerson and Thoreau must have had taking a walk about Concord, Massachusetts back in the day. Emerson, a dozen years older than Thoreau, might have offered more insight early on, but Thoreau measured up over time, diving deep into Transcendentalism and immersion in Nature (with a capital N). Thoreau was undoubtedly influenced by Emerson, and Emerson by Thoreau, yet each brought their own gift to the world.

      I’ve wondered at the writing lately. The content is a collection of many topics jumbled together, and much of that is by design. The scattered thoughts of one person marching through time. I’ve debated a shift to a once a week newsletter, which inherently would be more refined, more substantial and less clutter in the inbox of those who follow. But changing to a weekly post would change my habit loop in ways I wish to avoid. No, I subscribe to the Seth Godin school of daily blogging.

      So what then? Narrowing the focus to specific topics? Specializing for the pursuit of 1000 true fans? Instead of the trivial many blog posts, focus on the vital few, as Joseph M. Juran would say? If I were to monetize this site, I’d surely do that. But the goal of Alexandersmap is to seek adventure, to understand the place I find myself in (both physically and mentally) and write about it. And so it will continue as it always has been. The rest of the writing necessarily will evolve into a more focused pursuit of those vital few. But there’s something to be said for habit loops and cadence and Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours theory. Just write, often, on a diversity of topics, and the process will necessarily change you and improve the writing.

      And so here we are, one day at a time, building the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation, and seeing where it takes me. Is it a talent to write every day? Or accumulated skill? It would be brash to declare the former, and modest the latter. There’s a mix in there somewhere, but I do believe in sweat equity and making the most of the time we’re given. I’m a writer as long as I’m writing. There are plenty in this world doing the same. Whether the writing is that which I can do best? That will have to sort itself out. But I’m better for cultivating it.

    • On Discipline

      “Look at a river as it moves toward the sea. It creates its own banks that contain it. When there’s something within you that moves in the right direction, it creates its own discipline. The moment you get bitten by the bug of awareness.” – Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      Sometimes I fight active avoidance in the work I do, and find myself pushing through tasks that I have no desire to tackle. There are plenty of things that make my mind overflow the banks and wander in the wrong direction, and the pandemic has illuminated my routine and forced me to reconcile what matters in the job, in writing and in exercise and fitness. But the days flow differently when you’re constantly working from home. Work time blends into off time and vice versa. Writing time this morning was blown up by casually reading work email and reacting to the urgency of others. Discipline is not just doing the right things, its not doing other things at the wrong time. Learning, and re-learning, to say no or not yet.

      “Discipline equals freedom.” – Jocko Willink

      This is where those handy habit loops become an essential part of your day. They allow you to keep promises you make to yourself to keep moving forward. For the most part those habit loops have kept me on track, but I see some drift in my habits over the last month, beginning with vacation when the only thing I stuck with was the writing. Deep inside you know when things are off, and when corrective action is needed. Reflect on your current course, and then decide what to be and go be it.

      “It is a simple two-step process:
      1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
      2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.“
      – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      When you’re on the right path, doing the work is relatively easy. Sure, you can drift now and then, but resetting is natural, like setting the sails when the wind shifts. Discipline, when applied to the work you love, becomes natural through repetition. And that’s the trick, doing what you love. Following your path. Sounds positively dreamy, but there’s truth in it. Hate your work? You’ll be miserable as you force yourself down the trail of tears. Love your work? The word work disappears altogether and you focus on optimization instead. Yeah, optimization. I said it. There’s a business-speak word for you, but seriously, isn’t it better love what you do and focus on making the most of your day instead of hating what you do and focus on making it through the day?

      “Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” – Rumi

      I’m not one of those writers who pretends to have it all figured out. This blog is me figuring it out in writing. We’re all works in progress, aren’t we? Might as well enjoy the work as it progresses.